Climate and Soil Characteristics Determine Where No-Till Management Can Store Carbon in Soils and Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Article number: 11665 (2019)201

Hydrologic and non-point source pollution risk analysis on agricultural watersheds

Non-point source (NPS) pollution caused by nutrients and pesticides is a problem of significant interest in agricultural watersheds. The main goal of this study was the development of a decision support system (DSS) to compute hydrologic and NPS pollution risk in agricultural watersheds using a comprehensive hydrologic model. The SWAT model (Soil Water Assessment Tool) was selected for this purpose. SWAT was validated to predict daily and monthly in-stream atrazine concentration in the St. Joseph River watershed in northeast Indiana using nine years of data. Even though the model was somewhat inaccurate for predicting atrazine levels at specific points, SWAT performed well in predicting the general atrazine concentration trend in streams over time for daily and monthly time intervals. The estimation of the timing of atrazine application was very important in the calibration and validation processes and proved to be a key input to predict the amount and timing of pesticide released to streams. The model was deemed suitable to conduct NPS pollution risk analyses for atrazine by computation of exceedance probability curves and thematic and probability maps at a basin scale. Time series models combined with SWAT were explored to perform one-month-ahead forecasts of groundwater table depth and streamflow. After being calibrated and validated, SWAT was run to generate 50 years of records to make it possible to fit time series models to streamflow and groundwater monthly series without using long historical records. This strategy was validated in four watersheds in northeast Indiana and two watersheds in southeast Indiana, and it proved to be useful to forecast groundwater table depth for areas that lack long series of records. Finally, an analytical tool, named AGRIRISK, was proposed as an add-on application integrated to AVSWAT2000 to create a DSS. SWAT-AGRIRISK is intended to be used in agricultural watersheds to perform hydrologic and NPS pollution risk analyses, the later as a complement to the GLEAMS (Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems)-NAPRA (National Agricultural Pesticide Risk Analysis) system which cannot be readily applied to large watersheds. The system has been conceived to quantify and communicate the risk in the decision-making processes at regional levels, comparing soils and management scenarios

Appropriateness of antiplatelet therapy for primary and secondary cardio- and cerebrovascular prevention in acutely hospitalized older people

Aims: Antiplatelet therapy is recommended for the secondary prevention of cardio- and cerebrovascular disease, but for primary prevention it is advised only in patients at very high risk. With this background, this study aims to assess the appropriateness of antiplatelet therapy in acutely hospitalized older people according to their risk profile. Methods: Data were obtained from the REPOSI register held in Italian and Spanish internal medicine and geriatric wards in 2012 and 2014. Hospitalized patients aged 6565 assessable at discharge were selected. Appropriateness of the antiplatelet therapy was evaluated according to their primary or secondary cardiovascular prevention profiles. Results: Of 2535 enrolled patients, 2199 were assessable at discharge. Overall 959 (43.6%, 95% CI 41.5\u201345.7) were prescribed an antiplatelet drug, aspirin being the most frequently chosen. Among patients prescribed for primary prevention, just over half were inappropriately prescribed (52.1%), being mainly overprescribed (155/209 patients, 74.2%). On the other hand, there was also a high rate of inappropriate underprescription in the context of secondary prevention (222/726 patients, 30.6%, 95% CI 27.3\u201334.0%). Conclusions: This study carried out in acutely hospitalized older people shows a high degree of inappropriate prescription among patients prescribed with antiplatelets for primary prevention, mainly due to overprescription. Further, a large proportion of patients who had had overt cardio- or cerebrovascular disease were underprescribed, in spite of the established benefits of antiplatelet drugs in the context of secondary prevention